Maybe it was a zombie apocalypse. Perhaps an alien plague wiped out civilization. Or it something we engineered ourselves. Regardless, most of humanity is destroyed.

What happens to the buildings, bridges, and dams when we’re not there to look after them? How long will concrete and steel resist armies of vines and rust? Which animals will rule over the ruins we once called home?

And when humanity rises from the ashes, how will it climb slowly back up the technology ladder? What will humans need to know to protect themselves, grow crops, and reconquer nature? Where will we settle, and what hard-won knowledge will we recover first? Read more

An Unexpected Game

Matt, one of the two primary GMs in our group, supported the Tales from the Loop Kickstarter, spurred on by the splendid Simon Stålenhag art from which the game germinated. The rules are still being polished, but he and the rest of the group started playing with the latest PDF from the Kickstarter. They really enjoyed the first session.

Originally I wasn’t all that interested in the idea of playing as a teenager in the ’80s. I’d actually already been a teenager in the 1980s, and I wasn’t sure visiting an alternate Swedish sci-fi mystery version of it would be very compelling. After hearing about their characters and the fun the rest of my group had with the first session, I was intrigued. Then I got an unexpected opportunity to play. Read more

Inspiration tends to be nonlinear – at least for me. While reading rulebooks, modules, and actual play accounts often gives me interesting new ideas and ways of thinking about the games I’m playing, it’s often non-gaming media that provide the most powerful inspiration. Read more

I started Learn Tabletop RPGs in January, 2013. I picked the domain LearnTabletopRPGs.com and targeted the term tabletop RPG in order to help search visibility. The tactic worked, but let’s face it, Learn Tabletop RPGs is a pretty generic name. It’s also restrictive. While the site had become about more than learning how to play tabletop roleplaying games, the domain and site name had stayed the same. Read more

Ever since the iPad was first announced in the distant mists of time (2010), I’ve wanted an iPad with a screen large enough to easy read and annotate PDFs. In the intervening years the need has only grown, as I’ve shifted the majority of my RPG purchases from print to PDF. So when the 12.9″ iPad Pro was announced, I was eager to get one. It took a few months, but eventually I was able to make the purchase.

I put up the first version of Learn Tabletop RPGs on January 18, 2013. I kept adding more content, making adjustments to the site layout, and generally improving it where possible. The evening of August 31st this year, I flipped the switch on a new incarnation of the site.

Wreck Age is a post-apocalypse roleplaying game built around a miniatures skirmish combat system. The rules focus on the group rather than the individual, and resource management drives campaign play. The result is a refreshingly different post-apocalypse game.

Clayton Christensen, the celebrated author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, talks often about how marketers long ago became convinced that we make decisions about which products and services to buy on the basis of who we are and how we self-identify. He posits that much of this line of thinking is inaccurate, and that what we’re really doing when we make purchasing decisions (which can be extended to choosing political leaders, for example) is hiring. We are selecting something (a product, a service, a candidate, a way to spend our time) to do a job for us.

Tabletop roleplaying is almost always fun. Looking back on the years I’ve spent at the table, I can only think of a few instances when I would have rather been doing something else. And most of those incidents were in my teens, when I didn’t realize that the rules and the whim of the gamemaster are less important than everyone enjoying themselves.